Is Your Ego Blocking Your Path to Success?

If you want to be widely successful, one of the major things that you need to do is to check your ego at the door. Being on a personal development journey of my own for last decade, living in India for three years, and hustling hard for the previous five years to create my own success story, has taught me one thing the hard way. Succeeding in life and your career is a very spiritual practice, and it requires some serious “ego eradicating work” to be done.

Here’s how ego can get in the way of our success story, and what we can do to become more aware of its sabotage:

1. Ego can make us feel AND act small

On every journey to success, there are challenges, obstacles, and limitations to overcome. Let’s face it: if it were easy, everyone would be wildly successful! In those times, when it gets hard, our ego can make us feel small, not good enough, not capable enough, not _______ enough, to push through and come out as the winner. Especially when we are exposed to “perfect” lives of other people on Instagram and social media, we can get into a trap of comparing ourselves to others and feeling less worthy every single day, every time we scroll down our feed!

It is important to become aware of this self-belittling story and remind ourselves each time that it is our ego speaking, our fear-based story popping up to the surface: it is not our truth. The truth is that it is hard, and sleepless nights, hustling, frustrations, failures, mistakes…. are the part of the journey. And just like all other successful people pushed trough it, we can do it too. The difference between successful and not so successful people is that successful people also had difficult times, challenges, and those days when it was tough, and it seemed like an impossible dream to chase, but they did not quit on their goals. They did not give up, but instead, they kept on fighting and hustling hard to achieve their goals!

The truth is: it IS hard, and sleepless nights, hustling, frustrations, failures, mistakes…are part of the journey. Just like all other successful people pushed through it, we can do it too. The difference between successful and not so successful people is that successful people don’t quit. The persevere through those tough days and those setbacks. Instead, they kept on fighting and hustling hard to achieve their goals!

2. Ego can make us feel like a failure

If we face failure on the journey to success, our ego can make us feel like we are the biggest loser in the world. It’s there shouting that we are incapable and unable to achieve anything. It is important to pay close attention to our ego every time we face rejection or a failure, as in those times, if our ego wins we may end up quitting on our goal and crushing our self-esteem! We may take years to recover or keep on living in fear, that we may never again even try to go after our dreams and goals.

In those times, we need to remind ourselves that it is our ego telling those stories and the fact is that if we got rejected previously by one client, company, person… that doesn’t mean that we are good for no-one and that we will keep on being rejected in the future. We did not seem to be good enough for that one particular person, employer, opportunity, client… but we are the perfect fit for somebody else out there! Whether it’s coming up with a new approach or new strategies, you can’t give up. There are people out there who would benefit greatly from having us in their life and or in their company, but we will never be able to give them our unique gifts and serve them greatly if we give up!

3. Ego can make us feel arrogant

It is a struggle to go over the failure or get rejected, but there is one thing even harder than that. Staying humble when we do achieve success! Once we become successful, our ego will want to make us feel and act bigger and greater than other “mortals” out there who didn’t make it! It is important in those times to remind ourselves where we came from and how hard the journey we went through was. We need to stay humble and be kind to everyone as we should know best how it feels to be on the other side!

About the author

Danijela Jokic Vaislay

Danijela Jokic Vaislay is a life coach and featured writer for many international publications from Europe and currently lives in India. She is living her dream and it is her mission to help other people pursue and achieve their own dreams and goals as well.